The International Association "Le Vie di Leonardo" has established, with European recognition, "Leonardo da Vinci's Paths," an ideal itinerary that winds along the cultural routes that were crucial to Leonardo's great artistic and scientific genius, in the cities where he lived and worked, and in cities where his extraordinary masterpieces are preserved and visited.
The Unione Valle Savio and Cesena, along with Vinci and Amboise, the extreme places of his life, along with Florence, the city of his education and choice, along with Vipava and Istanbul, places of his desire, representing four European nations and extending to others, to all those potentially involved, are founding members of the Association and actively participate in the action and pursuit of common European goals.
Each year, a meeting of the Association is held in a different founding city, showcasing the various regions and hosting the destinations' top-notch activities. The 2025 event is planned and organized by the Unione Valle Savio e Cesena, which will first propose a journey that unites sea and mountains, landscape and fortifications, water and wine, books and drawing around the figure of Leonardo.
In the summer of 1502, Leonardo spent about a month of his life in Romagna, centered on Cesena, in the service of an ambitious and ruthless Duchy led by Cesare Borgia, a military leader and politician with grand military and civil plans, soon thwarted, along with some of Leonardo's own ideas. Cesena was the center of a plan that some have considered a foreshadowing of the policies to unite Italy into a single state: Borgia's gaze extended from Imola to Rimini from the battlements of the Rocca. Signs of Leonardo's presence can be seen in his "Romagna" drawings, some of them admirable, his research into nature and the surrounding area, his observations, and his days spent studying and studying.
The program for the May 2nd and 3rd tours, spanning Cesenatico, Cesena, Bagno, and the Savio Valley, follows the signs of the stations where Leonardo stopped and lingered, designing an ideal and hypothetical Sustainable Tourism Route, centered around Cesena and Romagna, with a unique cultural and touristic appeal that Leonardo's European Routes can maximize. This offers a diversified offering for users (e.g., schools and cultural tourists) who can visit, over the course of several days, Cesena and its architectural and artistic beauties (Library, Fortress, Abbey) and the Savio Valley (the landscapes of Tuscan Romagna), with the involvement of Cesenatico (Maritime Museum and Porto Canale) and the appreciation of gastronomic specialties and physical pleasures (sea and spa). Meeting participants and all citizens and tourists who wish to join them will be able to experience the joy of discovery and travel.
Specifically, the program begins in Cesenatico, starting at 10 a.m. on May 2nd with a visit to the Maritime Museum and the canal port that Leonardo saw and designed, also developing the idea of extending it to Cesena. Here, too, he applied his ingenious hydraulic and land management ideas, which also led him to study and attempt to solve some of the problems that existed at the time along the Savio River downstream from Cesena. The exceptional guide will be the Museum's Director, Davide Gnola, who will also give a lecture entitled September 6, 1502: Leonardo da Vinci at the Port of Cesenatico.
We continue by moving to Cesena, where the most important museums, the Malatestiana Library, the Fortress, and the Theater, will be open from 4:00 p.m. There is no information about Leonardo's presence in the Nuti Hall, but we can imagine that he spent a lot of time among the plutei, consulting books that are also present, in other writings, in his personal library, starting with those that will be on display for the occasion in an exhibition curated by the Malatestiana Library itself: the Malatesta manuscripts S.XXI.1 -> Roberto Valturio, De re militari and S.XXV.3 -> Vitruvius, On architecture. A conference will accompany the visit, held by Maria Cristina Misiti, Director of the MIBACT, former Director of the Central Institute for Restoration and Conservation, who will address the topic An infinite number of volumes, all in the vernacular. Leonardo's books, from his studiolo to the collections of bibliophiles. Focusing on the books that the genius from Vinci acquired over the course of his life, whose size was extraordinary for the time—approximately 200 pieces—and rich in insights and research areas, much of which remained unexplored. The conference is curated by the Nuova Fondazione Pedretti.
After attending the show at the Bonci Theatre from 9pm Leonardo da Vinci's chaotic journey through Romagna by and with Roberto Mercadini, in which the captivating narrator from Cesena treats Leonardo as an enchanted traveler who observes, listens and notes in a notebook, today known as “Codex L”, being in reality “architect and general engineer” in charge of the reorganization of the territory but also “minister of war”, with an eye devoted to defense and fortification, the Meeting continues on May 3rd with a stop at the Rocca Malatestiana, one of the places of Borgia and therefore of Leonardo, from which the view extends to the sea, from the plain to the hill; from 9:30 we return to the Malatestiana Library where the Curators of the New Pedretti Foundation, an institution created by the art critic and historian Carlo Pedretti, one of the most well-known and important of the second half of the twentieth century at an international level, in Castel Vitoni di Lamporecchio, where his immense collection of works is collected including some drawings by Leonardo, will talk about Carlo Pedretti's legacy in Leonardo studies in the history of art and scienceMargherita Melani and Sara Taglialagamba, who also holds the position of Director of the Le Vie di Leonardo Association, will present Carlo Pedretti's fundamental contribution to the attribution and reconstruction of an adequate chronology of Leonardo's works and will retrace the critic's happy and fruitful relationship with the city of Cesena, which hosted him on several occasions and which celebrated him after his death in 2018. At the end, the Members and the Participating Bodies of the Association will discuss the topic in a round table. The Vie di Leonardo Association: problems and prospects to define paths and strategies for the development of European routes, including new members and, above all, important tourism and cultural projects.
The Meeting will end in Bagno di Romagna at the Palazzo del Capitano, where from 4 pm it will be possible to visit the exhibition Leonardo and the shapes of water, curated by Pino Montalti, a photographic exhibition, as shown in the attached sheet, on the waters that flow from the mountains, now the Casentinesi Forests National Park, down to the plains and the sea, creating a waterway that unites the Cesena area, a region that Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by. He carefully observed the Savio and its tributaries, attempting to assess the hydraulic problems they posed. Leonardo's gaze will accompany visitors, even as they stroll through the hills and mountains of this prestigious hinterland, which constitutes one of the many possible landscapes Leonardo considered when depicting the natural perspectives of his extraordinary paintings.
The Meeting is the 4th Meeting of the International Association "Le Vie di Leonardo", planned and organized by the Municipality of Cesena/Unione Valle Savio, in collaboration with the Nuova Fondazione Pedretti.
